The Mystery of the Broken Cameras
by quicksilversquared
Summary: Keeping their identity secret from the masses was possibly the most important part of being a Miraculous user. The magic masks were their most obvious line of defense, as was hiding when transforming or detransforming. But what happens if there's a security camera nearby or if a nosy reporter follows them to their hiding spot? Turns out that the kwamis have thought of that as well.


The police of Paris were very, very puzzled.

No, this time they weren't confused by the akumas and at a loss as to how to deal with the whole Hawkmoth situation. This issue had nothing to do with how a very large segment of the population of Paris wanted Ladybug and Chat Noir to get a stipend for saving the city over and over again and nobody in the force had any idea how to set up accounts for the superheroes. They weren't perplexed (for now, at least) as to how to deal with the pesky tabloid reporters that kept trying to follow Ladybug and Chat Noir when they made their retreats, knowing full well that it could endanger the heroes' lives when they tried to push themselves too hard to escape.

No, this time they were confused over what seemed to be a new spree of petty vandalism.

All over the city, security cameras were being destroyed and no one had any clue how. The only indications that the camera was no longer in working condition was the shattered lens and wiring that sparked out as soon as the lens itself was replaced. It had happened before, of course- but on a much smaller scale- but this time, something was different.

The memory cards and the computer disks that held the information from the cameras were destroyed as well. Singe marks covered them, and it was impossible to get any good information off of them. Normally camera tampering cases were open-and-shut- just look at the card to see whose face was in the lens last, and then put out a notice to all officers to find that person. Sometimes it was intentional vandalism and they would have to try to get fingerprints to go along with the half-covered face, but that wasn't the case now.

There was no video, no fingerprints, and- with the exception of the shattered lenses- no indication of on the outside of the cameras that someone was tampering with them. It was very, _very_ weird, and _very_ concerning.

But they were positive that they would solve this case. It couldn't possibly be _that_ hard to do.

* * *

"That was so close!" Marinette exclaimed quietly to Tikki as they left the alley she had just detransformed in. "Wow. I thought that akuma would get us for sure! I really hope Hawkmoth doesn't make an akuma like that again. Chat Noir and I barely won!"

"You'll get better at working together and fighting the akumas, Marinette," Tikki said, peering up at Marinette from inside Marinette's purse. "I promise! It always takes a while for Ladybug and Chat Noir to really get the hang of their powers. And Hawkmoth already knows how to use his, since they're fairly straightforward. Maybe he'll get a little better at designing effective akuma, but the Butterfly Miraculous' powers aren't exactly something that can be controlled very easily, especially when Nooroo is being forced to transform against his will."

Marinette let out a sigh of relief. "That's good! Hopefully the fights will start getting a lot shorter, too. I hate missing so much class and not being able to have any free time to design because an akuma interrupted my homework!"

"Some might be shorter, but some akuma will always take a bit of time to take down," Tikki said, making a face. She looked up at Marinette again as they rounded a corner, headed back for the bakery. "But maybe you and Chat Noir could cut down on patrols. That would give you more free time!"

Marinette frowned at that. "But aren't patrols important?"

Tikki's little face screwed up even more. "I mean..."

" _Tikki_."

"They're really not!" Tikki defended. "You've never found an akuma while you were out, and even if you did, I would already be a little tired from keeping you transformed. They're important so that you can catch up with Chat Noir on a regular basis and touch base in case you need to get in contact...but they could probably be shorter, and only a few nights a week."

"I'll talk to Chat Noir about it," Marinette promised as she headed up her street. Tikki had a point- the patrols really weren't that effective. They were fun, though, and she would miss them if she and Chat Noir cut them down to only once or twice a week. "He probably won't be...happy..."

She trailed off as she spotted the group of city maintenance workers just a little ways down the street bakery, putting up a security camera pointed right at the alley where she tended to detransform the most when she wasn't supposed to be up in her room yet. A shiver ran down her spine. Additional security cameras generally weren't put up unless there had been some sort of problem in the area, so had there been a break-in? Or was the government going back on its promise to Ladybug and Chat Noir that they would leave their secret identities secret and not try to figure them out? If someone had caught on to the fact that Ladybug went in that alley a lot at the end of fights...

Her panic was very, very real. Being a superhero and having a secret identity in this day and age was too hard, what with all of the hidden cameras and reporters live-streaming and everything else that could threaten a secret identity. Superheroes back in the old days didn't know how good they had it.

 _No_. There was no reason to stress quite yet. Maybe there had been some sort of incident in the area. It was almost funny to think that a break-in or robbery would be a better alternative than nothing happening, but nothing happening would mean that the cameras almost certainly had something to do with Ladybug and her secret identity. She would just have to ask her mother and see if she knew anything about the security cameras.

* * *

"Oh, there's no need to worry, dear. Nothing happened in the area," Sabine assured Marinette, which had the complete opposite effect. She was very, _very_ worried now. "They're just replacing an old camera that got broken recently."

Marinette's brain ground to a halt. _What._

"There- there's always been a camera there?" Marinette asked nervously. _How recent is recently? Before I became Ladybug, or last week?_ "I didn't know that."

"There's cameras all over the city, dear," Sabine said cheerfully, patting Marinette's head before she continued assembling dinner, oblivious to Marinette's quickly rising panic. "But apparently there's been a recent bout of vandalism and the police are finding a lot of cameras that are mysteriously broken. They've made a big push to replace all of the broken ones they can find so that they can continue to keep the city as safe as possible."

"Right, right, of course," Marinette managed, and then she had to run up to her room under the guise of homework to freak out. As soon as she closed the trapdoor, Tikki spiraled out of her purse with a concerned look on her little face.

"Marinette-"

"I completely forgot about the security cameras!" Marinette half-whispered, half-screeched. She only just remembered to keep her voice down so that her mother wouldn't overhear. "How am I cut out to be a superhero if I forget about the freaking security cameras? I'll be lucky if the one near here broke before I started using that alley to detransform! And maybe most of the security cameras around here are only reviewed if something happens in the area, but how am I supposed to trust that no one will decide to review all of the recordings to try to figure out my identity? And-"

"Calm down, Marinette! You don't have anything to worry about!" Tikki chirped, flying up in Marinette's face to get her attention. "The Miraculous takes care of everything! The broken cameras- that's because of you and Chat Noir!"

Marinette blinked, taken aback. "...because of Chat Noir and I? But I haven't broken any cameras!"

"It's the power from your transformation! It protects you!" Tikki was beaming up at her. "In the past, it would just temporarily blind people who got too close to someone who was transforming or detransforming, so that our Chosens had time to get away! Now, the power destroys cameras nearby- well, ones that are on, that is," Tikki corrected herself. "And ones that aren't yours. Your computer cam is safe and so is your phone, because I know they're there and they don't come up as threats, but everything else? It gets broken and the memory gets erased, just a bit. That way, no one will see you come into an alley before the camera spontaneously breaks."

Marinette couldn't quite wrap her head around that. It seemed too good to be true. "So...if a reporter did manage to follow me tried to get video of me detransforming, they wouldn't be able to?"

Tikki nodded happily. "Uh-huh! They would be blinded for a minute or two, and their camera would break and erase the footage leading up to you detransforming. It was a lot of work for me to figure out how to do that at first since technology has changed so much from when I was last active, but it was important! There's so many cameras around and I knew it would be too much stress if I made you look around for cameras before detransforming, so I made it a priority right after our first battle."

"That's...good." Now that she had a little more time to actually think, Marinette had to wonder why Tikki hadn't mentioned that little detail to her before. Maybe she figured that, in the larger scheme of things, it just wasn't that important. After all, Marinette was still in the middle of quite a steep learning curve as she tried to get better at using her powers and fighting alongside Chat Noir and if the cameras were taken care of, then it really wasn't a necessity for her to be thinking about them at all.

Still, Marinette had more questions.

"What if Chat Noir or I accidentally stumble on one another while detransforming?"

Tikki paused at that. "Well...then it would depend on if the other person is transformed or not. If they are, then it would only blind them for a couple seconds, because if you were mid-battle and your partner was blinded, that would be really bad. If they were not transformed...well, they wouldn't be affected for as long as a normal person, but there should still be enough time for you to get away."

"And if Hawkmoth or an akuma ever is nearby?"

Tikki had to think about that. " _Weeellll_..."

Marinette didn't like the sound of that.

"Normally, the Butterfly Miraculous and its champions are on our side," Tikki said, looking a bit nervous. "So we've never had to really worry about them too much. But, uh, hopefully Nooroo is holding back a little of his magic, so they wouldn't be shielded from the blinding as much as normal."

"So I just have to keep being careful about getting away from the akumas when I need to transform or recharge, just like normal," Marinette concluded. She bit her lip. "...and what if I wanted someone to see?"

Tikki frowned. "Marinette..."

"If it was an emergency! And just if it was Chat Noir!" Marinette insisted. "I know I can't tell him now, but what if we're still fighting Hawkmoth in several years and we decided that we could coordinate better if we knew who the other person was? With your permission first, of course," she tacked on hastily. "I wouldn't just decide out of nowhere."

Again, Tikki took a bit longer to answer. " _Wellll_...technically, once you decide- even subconsciously- that you wouldn't mind someone knowing your secret identity, the blinding effect won't work as well on them. And if you consciously decided that you wanted Chat Noir to know- which, by the way, not right now," she reminded Marinette, and Marinette nodded.

"I know."

"Then it might hurt his eyes a little bit to stare right at you as you detransformed, but it wouldn't blind him at all," Tikki finished. "Is that everything?"

"Yeah, of course." Marinette scooped the little god out of the air to snuggle her against her cheek. "You're the best, Tikki."

* * *

"I just don't understand," Officer Raincomprix said as he and his detectives stared down at the remains of no fewer than twelve security cameras' glass lenses, scattered down the alley under each of the hidden cameras. Some had been obvious, while others had been pretty well camouflaged- or, well, Officer Raincomprix had thought they were pretty well camouflaged. He hadn't been able to see them at all. "How could something like this have happened without a single camera picking up any evidence?"

"And the camera across the street is shattered as well," another officer piped up, pointing at the hidden camera on the opposite side of the street. The glass from the lens had long since been kicked down the sidewalk by dozens of pedestrians going past. "And sir, whatever's going on that's doing this...there's been no increase in crime around this area, even without the cameras. In fact, crime has been going down, if you don't count this vandalism."

Officer Raincomprix raised an eyebrow. "So what are you saying, Officer Duval?"

The younger cop looked a little nervous. "Well...just that it's a bit of a waste of resources to keep putting up new cameras if they're going to be broken a day later. And as long as there's no crime spree happening because of the missing cameras-"

"Maybe they're trying to lure us into a false sense of security!" Officer Raincomprix barked back, but he settled down quickly. "What's your suggestion, then?"

"Well...maybe we should forget about replacing the cameras for now," Officer Duval suggested. "Wait and see if anything happens. And in the meantime, try to see if there's a pattern going on."

The older officer sniffed at that. "We can't just _not_ replace cameras. They're here for security!" Then he paused before continuing, a little more calmly. "...but I _suppose_ it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye out for any patterns."

* * *

Chat Noir had just detransformed in an alley when the sound of glass falling on the pavement made him pause. Adrien turned, puzzled, just in time to catch sight of the tail end of the small waterfall of glass pieces falling from a partially-hidden security camera.

"That's...strange," Adrien commented as he automatically handed Plagg a chunk of cheese. "I haven't seen that before."

"Yeah, normally stuff doesn't fall apart until we've left," Plagg said lazily, inhaling the entire chunk in one bite. "It must have been put up at a funny angle- what?"

"What do you mean, stuff doesn't fall apart until we've left?" Adrien demanded, only just barely remembering to keep his voice down. "Am I the one responsible for all of those broken cameras?" He remembered overhearing something about that when a city worker came by to make sure his father knew to keep an eye on her own personal security cameras. The police force was keeping the problem on the down-low, so that any criminals wouldn't try to take advantage of the broken cameras.

"Well, you and Ladybug," Plagg corrected, seemingly uncaring of Adrien's sudden freak-out because _he was the one responsible for the vandalism of public property if anyone found out he would be in so much trouble_. "It's to protect your secret identity. If any functional cameras are in the area when you transform or detransform, they go boom."

Adrien blinked. "...they go boom."

Plagg made a noise of disgust and swirled up into Adrien's face. "Think about it, kid! Cameras all over, and if we didn't do something it wouldn't be a week before your pretty face was all over the news with a video of you either transforming or detransforming. Yeah, maybe it's a bit inconvenient for the city to have to replace the cameras over and over, but they really should have figured out by now that they're only gonna get broken again."

"Remind me never to detransform near any of my father's cameras," Adrien said a bit faintly. "He'd be ticked beyond belief if something broke. And Nathalie always has those feeds on a computer screen nearby. It wouldn't matter that the camera broke. She's pretty smart; she would figure me out in a second."

"Yes, well, even the best live-stream cameras have a bit of a lag," Plagg said around a yawn. "The magic would take out enough of the video feed that you wouldn't be discovered, unless you hung around for forever before transforming. So don't do that, maybe."

"What would happen if you were out of my pocket for a bit when I wasn't about to transform?" Adrien asked, curiosity taking over as the panic slowly ebbed away. "Like, if you decided to sit in my hair again and there was a camera nearby? Would it break, or would it be fine?"

Plagg sniggered. "You say that like there's no in-between. If I were in view of the camera, the recording would go kind of hazy, like there was some sort of interference. It would go back to normal once we left, though."

Adrien was suitably impressed. "That's super-cool!"

Plagg let out a long-suffering sigh. " _Super-necessary_ is more like it. Like I said, if it weren't for the identity-hiding side effects, your identity would've been blown wide open by the end of your first week. You and Ladybug don't appreciate all of the little stuff that goes into keeping your civilian identities off of Hawkmoth's hit list."

"That might be because we didn't know about it," Adrien pointed out rather reasonably, but Plagg didn't seem to care. All of his attention was on the cheese clutched between his paws. He frowned as he thought of something else. "Won't the police notice, though? I mean- they've already figured out that the cameras are getting broken somehow. They're bound to put the pieces together eventually."

"Ah, let them figure it out" Plagg said lazily, plopping the entire slice of cheese in his mouth in one go and speaking around it. "It's not like they can do anything about it anyway."

* * *

"The broken cameras have been concentrated in these areas," Officer Duval announced at their next meeting. He tapped on a clicker and the PowerPoint slide that he had made appeared on the screen. "I talked with business owners in the area that might have their own cameras, and a few also reported outdoor security cameras being broken like the city ones. And, most interesting of all, the mayor had similar vandalism in his hotel."

"In it?" another officer asked. "Really? But the doorman weeds out all of the, uh, less savory-looking people."

There were a few mutters at that. The doorman's rudeness to people he perceived as less than affluent had caused more than a couple problems in the past, and recently had even provoked an akuma. The mayor refused to talk to the doorman about it, probably because he would act the same way.

Officer Duval shrugged. "Well, clearly they missed something." He clicked to another slide. "And that's not all. The Louvre also reported a few broken security cams. They had dates on when the cams went out, which is helpful." Another click to another slide. "As you can see, the dates and times on the broken cameras in the Louvre correspond with akuma attacks in the area. I have come to the conclusion that the sheer amount of magic running wild in the area must cause the cameras to go haywire and break."

"Except not all of the cameras in the Louvre broke," Officer Raincomprix pointed out, shifting in his chair. "They have more cameras than that in the building, and there is footage of parts of the fight. Besides, the Ladyblogger's camera never acts up and she's always in the middle of those fights."

The younger officer's shoulders drooped as he looked back at his slides. "But the timing..."

"Unless you can come up with a plausible theory as to why not all cameras are affected the same way, I don't want to be bothered by it." Officer Raincomprix glanced around the room. "Well, if that's all you have, I should be off. I'm rather busy today."

"But I had three more slides," Officer Duval muttered rather morosely as the door shut behind Officer Raincomprix. It didn't matter. Everyone in the room had more or less stopped listening the moment that the more senior officer left. The conversation swelled, even though he hadn't left the front of the room, and soon the chatter had risen to a dull roar that he couldn't have been heard over even if he had tried.

Sighing, Officer Duval closed out of his PowerPoint and left the room. He would find his evidence, he was sure of it. He had to admit that Officer Raincomprix had had a point about the other cameras that still managed to function despite nearby akuma attacks, but that didn't mean that his idea was completely without merit. It just meant that, well, his idea was incomplete.

He would find that missing piece of the puzzle. It was just a matter of time.

* * *

 _One year later_

Tabloid reporter Isabelle Tanner smirked to herself as she crept towards the alley. She had just spotted Ladybug drop down into that very same alley, seconds away from detransforming after a long and probably pretty tiring fight. The alley, as Isabelle knew full well, was a dead end and had nothing to really hide behind in it- no Dumpsters, no garbage cans, no corners of buildings or doorways. Ladybug would be trapped- not that she knew it. The superheroine was probably planning on detransforming and heading on her merry way just like she normally did.

Not this time. Isabelle was going to get an _exclusive_ video of Paris' favorite superheroine detransforming, and then she was going to get a just-as-exclusive interview- the first ever- with the girl behind Ladybug's mask, whether she wanted to give it or not. Once her identity was exposed, it wasn't as though Ladybug would be able to simply vanish into thin air like she normally did. She would have to talk to Isabelle, who could them whip up an article with both the reveal and the interview in under an hour and have the breaking news out before the day was over.

Best of all, by the end of the day, Isabelle would no doubt be promoted from intern to an actual reporter at the tabloid she had worked at for ages. She would get to do interviews with famous people on a regular basis, she would get to write more of her own articles, she would get her own office, she would get a raise...

Isabelle peeked around the corner. Ladybug had her back to her and was still transformed, though her earrings were beeping loudly. She stuck her camera around the corner as well and started recording as she kept her eyes glued on the superheroine. _Any second now...any second now..._

A bright flash lit up the alley, and then all Isabelle could process was the burning pain in her eyes.

* * *

Marinette spun around at the scream that had rung out the second she had detransformed. Her heart rate, which had been dropping back to normal as the adrenaline from the fight wore off, picked back up again as she scanned the streets for-

 _Oh._

A lady that Marinette recognized as a gossip columnist from one of the less reputable tabloids in France was on ground near the mouth of the alley, hands grasping at her eyes as she rocked back and forth on her knees. By her feet was a video camera, the lens cracked in that oh-so-familiar pattern. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. A reporter had tried to expose her secret identity, had been foiled by the Miraculous magic ( _Thank you, Tikki_ ), and any second now people would be converging as they tried to figure out what had happened. If she was still here and the reporter mentioned Ladybug...

Marinette bolted.

* * *

The officers assigned to clean up any confusion after the akuma fight paused as screaming cut through the air. It was just one person, which in itself was odd. If there had been another akuma set loose on the heels of the one that had just been defeated (a rarity for sure, but it had happened), there would have been far more screaming and probably some crashing around or other strange, out-of-place noises to boot. With one last glance around to make sure there weren't any confused, out-of-place tourists still wandering around in need of direction (there weren't), they all ran towards the sound.

They weren't expecting to see a young woman curled up on the ground, clutching at her eyes and screaming.

"Ma'am, I need you to calm down," Officer Raincomprix said immediately, crouching down and placing a hand on her shoulder. "Calm down and tell us what happened. Was there an akuma?"

"No! I'm blind, I'm blind, my whole life is ruined! How am I supposed to be a reporter if I'm _blind?_ " The last few words were almost a shriek. "What was supposed to be the biggest story of my entire career made me _blind!"_

The officers blinked at each other in confusion, unable to make head or tail out of what the woman was saying. Before they could ask for further clarification, Officer Duval noticed something. He crept forward to inspect the camera, motioning one of his fellow officers forward to join him. He picked up the camera that had fallen to the sidewalk and they raised their eyebrows in unison at the busted lens on the front. It wasn't surprising that it had cracked when the woman dropped it, but the cracks were in the exact same pattern as the cracks in the security cameras above them. Officer Paul flipped the camera over and very carefully pulled out the SD card. It was charred and blackened, even beyond what they normally saw. Whatever had hit this lady was clearly the same thing that had made victims out of security cameras citywide.

"The biggest story of your career?" Officer Raincomprix asked, not noticing his younger officers pointing and whispering around the video camera. "Can you elaborate-?"

He was cut off by a sudden sharp laugh. "But how can I forget? I recorded it- I still have my scoop! I caught Ladybug detransforming on tape, I can still get my exclusive and I _will_ , even if I have to make someone be my eyes for me-"

"Actually, your camera is destroyed," Officer Paul said calmly, even as his mind raced, putting pieces together at the speed of light. This woman- a reporter of some sort, if he was understanding correctly- had followed Ladybug to catch her detransforming. However, whatever magic transformed Ladybug had apparently managed to simultaneously blind the woman and destroyed the lens of her camera (and the lenses of the security cameras in the alleyway, if his eyes weren't mistaking him; there were definitely several small piles of glass littering the ground).

The shriek that the woman let out had all of the officers flinching. " _Destroyed?_ What do you mean, my camera is destroyed? That's impossible!" She reached out blindly, flailing a bit. "I didn't drop it that hard, it has to just be a little crack in the lens, that's it, it'll still have her detransforming, I still have _something_ -"

"And the SD card is fried," Officer Paul added, quickly losing patience with the woman. From what he could tell from their short interaction, she had rather deserved the blinding. It had become unofficially illegal to try to uncover the two superheroes' secret identities a month after the duo arrived in Paris due to the dangers it would expose them to if Hawkmoth knew their secret identities, and she had completely ignored that just to get a "scoop". He sent a significant look at Officer Raincomprix. "Fried even worse than the ones in the broken security cameras, and we couldn't retrieve _any_ data off of those."

The wailing immediately started up again.

* * *

By the time they reached the station, the woman (Isabelle Tanner, they learned) had recovered from what appeared to have been a temporary bout of blindness and the police had finally, _finally_ put all of the clues together.

(They had also decided that the reporter was going to be charged for the crime of putting the city's superheroes in danger and breach of privacy, but that was far less exciting. To them, at least.)

Broken cameras near akuma attacks, but not all cameras. A quick glance at the most recent data from attacks that they could actually remember showed that it was cameras that were just out of the way of the akuma attacks that were broken. The fact that no one had found, either accidentally or on purpose, camera footage of either Ladybug or Chat Noir detransforming. The timing of when they had started to find the destroyed security cams. Everything made sense. It was Ladybug and Chat Noir's transformations (and detransformations) that were wrecking the city's security cameras, all to keep their identities protected.

It made sense, and it was honestly a relief to finally figure it out because at least now they knew that it wasn't a band of shady thieves. However, it also made things more difficult since they couldn't exactly ask the superheroes to stop protecting their identities or to find different places to hide that wouldn't have cameras, because the duo already did enough for the city and the police weren't going to make their job harder if they could help it. The police would have to try to find some other solution.

But that was a problem for another day. For now, they had a cowering reporter to send to jail.

* * *

 _A/N: As with most of my stories, this is a one-shot and is therefore complete.  
_

 _Please leave reviews, they really make my day! :)_


End file.
